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Budget 2025: ID cards, health care for gig workers, announces Nirmala Sitharaman
Nirmala Sitharaman said that gig workers will be issued identity cards and added to a national registry, ensuring their inclusion in welfare schemes.
Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday announced that the government will formally register gig workers and facilitate their access to healthcare.
While presenting the budget in Lok Sabha, the finance minister said that gig workers will be issued identity cards and added to a national registry, ensuring their inclusion in welfare schemes.
“Gig workers on online platforms bring significant dynamism to the new-age services economy. Acknowledging their contribution, our government will provide them with identity cards and register them on the e-Shram portal. They will also receive healthcare under the PM Jan Arogya Yojana. This initiative is expected to benefit nearly 1 crore gig workers,” said Nirmala Sitharaman.
She also introduced a social security scheme for the welfare of online platform workers, with the implementation of this scheme in public-private partnership (PPP) mode.
“States will be encouraged to adopt this model and can seek assistance from the India Infrastructure Project Development Fund (IIPDF) scheme to prepare PPP proposals,” Sitharaman added.
According to NITI Aayog’s estimates, India’s gig economy could employ more than 23 million people by 2030.
The ongoing budget session of Parliament, which began on January 31, will run until April 4. The budget speech covered key fiscal strategies, taxation reforms, revenue and expenditure proposals, and other major announcements.
This is the eighth budget presented by Nirmala Sitharaman. The 2024-25 Economic Survey projects India’s economy to grow between 6.3 percent and 6.8 percent in the upcoming 2025-26 fiscal year.
Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi on Saturday took a dig at the Centre over the Union Budget 2025, saying it is “a band-aid for bullet wounds”.
“Amid global uncertainty, solving our economic crisis demanded a paradigm shift. But this government is bankrupt of ideas,” Rahul Gandhi posted on X.
The Congress earlier criticised the Union Budget, presented by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman as bereft of cure to “illnesses” of stagnant real wages, lack of buoyancy in mass consumption, sluggish rates of private investment, and a complicated GST system that the economy is suffering from.
